App Publishing Lifecycle

Once you have developed an app, it's time to publish it to Insight Cloud. When your app and its Sigma dashboard are ready, you upload the app for validation. Publishing makes the app available for organizations to install.

App vs. listing: an app is what you build and publish to Insight Cloud. A listing is the App Store page for an app. It exists only for organizations set up as publishers, and it is how apps are offered for subscription. Publishing an app does not put it in the App Store, and apps never need a listing to be installed: an app can be installed directly into any organization. Listings and publisher setup are covered in the publisher guides.

  1. Upload your app to IC, this step allows Seek to validate your app and ensure it is safe to run in the cloud. If it is successful, a new version of the app will be registered.

  2. Publish an app version, in this step you are able to make a particular version of your app available. This is useful if you are making changes to the app and want to test them before making them available to all users. It can also be used to revert the app version available on the platform.

  3. Add app metadata in the App Catalog, this step allows you to customize a variety of details about how your app will behave across the platform. App Store listing details are managed separately by publishers.

Build an App

After your SBT project is built and tested, you can run sbt build-app --app-name <app-name> to upload your app, dependencies and structure to Insight Cloud. This will validate your app and ensure it is safe to run in the cloud. If the validation is successful, a new version of the app will be registered.

Publish an App Version

After building you can run sbt publish-app <app-name> <version>. Once a version of your app is published, that is now the official version across Insight Cloud. Any new orgs that install your app will get this version. Any existing subscribers will be automatically updated to this version on their next app run.

What build and publish actually do

The two commands sound similar but do very different work behind the scenes.

Build (sbt build-app) prepares and validates a version:

  • Checks the version is not already published and locked

  • Uploads your source code and configuration to secure platform storage

  • Builds the app's runtime image to prove the platform can execute it

  • Reads your app spec and registers its metadata. Models, sources, parameters, helper queries, and schemas

  • The version stays visible only to you until you publish it

Publish (sbt publish-app) makes a built version real for everyone:

  • Locks the version permanently. A published version never changes

  • Makes it the default version for new installs

  • Existing subscribers update to it automatically on their next run when possible. Publishing affects live installs, so treat it with care

  • The first time you publish an app, a listing record is created automatically. It appears on the App Store only if your organization has completed publisher setup. Apps without listings can still be installed directly into organizations

Publishing still puts the app in the catalog only. It is installed nowhere until an organization gets access. See Prerequisites for App Installs.